Throughout history politicians have used stump speaking, political rallies, political advertisements, and other various methods to achieve their primary goal, “the winning of votes,” (Syzbillo & Hartenbaum, 1976). However over recent years politicians have found that negative political advertisements are the most advantageous campaign technique. Conventional wisdom about negative political campaigning holds that it works. Negative campaigning is an effective means of winning votes, however some research suggests that negative campaigning tends to depress voter turnout because it lowers feelings of political efficacy and trust in the government (Lau, Sigelman, Rovner, 2007). So why is negative campaigning effective? Negative political ads …show more content…
There is a reason for this. Political scientists Stephen Ansolabehere and Shanto Iyengar summarized why advertisements have become of great importance for campaigns, in their book, Going Negative; Unlike most channels of communication, advertising allows candidates to reach uninterested and unmotivated citizens – those who ordinarily pay little attention to news reports, debates, and other campaign events. After all, the ‘audience’ for political advertising is primarily inadvertent – people who happen to be watching their preferred television programs. Of course, viewers can choose to tune out or channel surf during advertising breaks, but the fact remains that the reach of advertising extends beyond relatively attentive and engaged voters. (1995:52) The sights and sounds of the television are a staple in any American home. Therefore, TV advertising is one of the best tools for politicians to get their message to a large group of apolitical voters, those who don’t follow political campaigns. What is important to note is that these people are often profoundly influenced by the political advertisements of which they are exposed, (McAllister, …show more content…
Emotions are dispositions to act, although they do not always manifest in overt behavior (Frijda, 1987). Lang proved in his research that two motivational systems are activated by emotional inputs direct and indirectly through media (2006), such as televised political ads. The valence of the stimuli (positive or negative) determines which motivational system is activated (Bradley, Angelini, & Lee, 2007); the more arousing the stimulus the stronger the activation. Motivational activation, “initiates a cascade of sensory and motor processes, including processes, including mobilization of resources, enhanced perceptual processing, and preparation for action” (Bradley, 2009). The appetitive system is activated by positive stimuli, which facilitates approach tendency or behaviors, including mobilizing attentional resources for sensory intake (Wang et al., 2014). The aversive system is activated by negative stimuli, such as threats; with increased intensity of negative stimuli and greater activation of the aversive system, the attentional pattern often switches from information intake (i.e., identifying threat) to information rejection (i.e., fight or flight mode) (Lang, 2006). Thus Lang is saying our attention is motivated by our emotions. Understanding these two systems has helped to explain the effects of emotional messages on attention, affective, and behavior
Often Advertising uses persuasion to inform the audience; in fact it is the most import aspect to advertising. Advertising would simply be a conversation between the communicator and their recipients if persuasion weren’t present. Although the basic purposes are to inform and persuade, it is left to the audience when it comes to differentiating between factual information and unethical persuasive tactics. The persuader, wishes for the consumer to act or believe in a certain way. Whether sought after actions are positive or negative, ends up being the question. In the modern world it has become more difficult to differentiate between truths and untruths; mainly due to the technological advances in advertising medium. Differentiating between facts and propaganda becomes increasingly more challenging when it comes to politics. Whether it is an election for student senate or the United States general election for Presidency; there are a lot of factors weighing in on the decision process. During an election year, persuasive tactics become essential in the success of a campaign. Although many voters have made up their minds when they are first bombarded by the political campaigning, these pre-developed opinions are not viewed as an impenetrable force by the campaigner. The campaigner typically recognizes these patterns in opinion and instead aims to persuade them from a different angle, most commonly the emotions surrounding the issues rather than the issues themselves. This paradigm changed in political persuasion was first seen September 7, 1964 when a rattling ad for Lynden Johnson played over NBC. The ad now known as “Daisy Girl” forever changed political persuasion in advertising. With this change came the issue of ethi...
It is very common among the United States’ political sphere to rely heavily on T.V. commercials during election season; this is after all the most effective way to spread a message to millions of voters in order to gain their support. The presidential election of 2008 was not the exception; candidates and interest groups spent 2.6 billion dollars on advertising that year from which 2 billion were used exclusively for broadcast television (Seelye 2008.) Although the effectiveness of these advertisements is relatively small compared to the money spent on them (Liasson 2012), it is important for American voters to think critically about the information and arguments presented by these ads. An analysis of the rhetoric in four of the political campaign commercials of the 2008 presidential election reveals the different informal fallacies utilized to gain support for one of the candidates or misguide the public about the opposing candidate.
Using Negative or Attack Ads involves saying bad things about your opponent. It's basically making voters scared about their future if the other candidate wins. The ad that was posted by former president George Bush was to influence voters to vote for him instead of his opponent. He put out an ad saying that his opponent was against our defense system and that worried our nation. This greatly limited his opponents chances of getting
Advertising is so prominent in American culture, and even the world at large, that this media form becomes reflective of the values and expectations of the nation’s society at large.
The definition of fear has proved to be an elusive mystery plaguing scientists. While there is much agreement as to the physiological effects of fear, the neural pathways and connections that bring upon these effects are not well understood. From the evolutionary standpoint, the theory is that fear is a neural circuit that has been designed to keep the organism alive in dangerous situations (1). How does it all work? Learning and responding to stimuli that warn of danger involves neural pathways that send information about the outside world to the amygdala, which in turn, determines the significance of the stimulus and triggers emotional responses like freezing or fleeing as well as changes in the inner workings of the body's organs and glands (1). There are important distinctions to make between emotions and feelings. Feelings are "red herrings", products of the conscious mind, labels given to unconscious emotions (2) whereas emotions are distinct patterns of behaviors of neurons. Emotions can exist of conscious experiencesas well as physiological and neurological reactions and voluntary and involuntary behaviors (3). But the components of fear goes beyond feelings and emotions. It is also the specific memory of the emotion. After a frightful experience, one can remember the logical reasons for the experience (e.g. the time and place) but one will also "feel" the memory, and his body will react as such (i.e. increased heart and respiration rate, sweating). In one recent case, after a near drowining incident, the victim could not only vividly remember each detail, but when doing so, his body reacted as though he were reliving the experience. These feelings of memory are stored in an ...
The aim of this paper is to look at the relationship between the mass media, specifically television, and presidential elections. This paper will focus on the function of television in presidential elections through three main areas: exit polls, presidential debates, and spots. The focus is on television for three reasons. First, television reaches more voters than any other medium. Second, television attracts the greatest part of presidential campaign budgets. Third, television provides the candidates a good opportunity to contact the people directly. A second main theme of this paper is the role of television in presidential elections in terms of representative democracy in the United States.
In the 2012 election Obama used posters and commercials to help get the people’s support. He used posters that said “hope” to reach out to the people and get their help. Politicians such as presidents and mayors use propaganda to persuade people to vote for them. With propaganda they can change people’s minds to vote for them. Using political propaganda for their campaigns, politicians have been able to get the people’s support and win elections.
Television has affected every aspect of life in society, radically changing the way individuals live and interact with the world. However, change is not always for the better, especially the influence of television on political campaigns towards presidency. Since the 1960s, presidential elections in the United States were greatly impacted by television, yet the impact has not been positive. Television allowed the public to have more access to information and gained reassurance to which candidate they chose to vote for. However, the media failed to recognize the importance of elections. Candidates became image based rather than issue based using a “celebrity system” to concern the public with subjects regarding debates (Hart and Trice). Due to “hyperfamiliarity” television turned numerous people away from being interested in debates between candidates (Hart and Trice). Although television had the ability to reach a greater number of people than it did before the Nixon/Kennedy debate, it shortened the attention span of the public, which made the overall process of elections unfair, due to the emphasis on image rather than issue.
Emotion and cognition are intricately intertwined and hard to tell which is influencing us in our everyday lives. While the former are sometimes referred to as feelings and affects (this term would be used interchangeably with emotion in this article) or “hot cognition”, the latter is often thought as our reasoning, or “cold cognition” (Zajonc, 1980). However, it is quite evident from our day-to-day account of events that it’s always the emotional parts of life that catch our attention - especially the bad ones. For one thing, as a general phenomenon, bad news is considered more newsworthy and can easily attract more reader attention (Baumeister,
“Negative advertising gets the supporters committed and excited” (Bike 1). What Bike is trying to say is that negative advertisement gets people excited and wanting to look into that specific person. This essay is going to be about how negative advertisement should be allowed. People should have the right to pledge whatever they want to pledge in. “ A ban on negative political advertising would open the political world up to those who don’t want to be expose themselves to media bullies” (Admin 2). I believe that if people are scared to expose themselves then they must have something to hide. Even though negative things said about those candidates are not true, I believe that negative political advertisement should be allowed because negative advertisement makes people want to look more into that specific candidate and we are emotionally attached to negativity.
Some examples include television, radio, and mail aimed to get voters to support a certain candidate. Many different strategies go into these supporting platforms, including bashing other candidates and promoting the good things their candidate has done. Just from these examples alone, it s clear that marketing plays a large role in political campaigns. However, in order to have a successful marketing campaign, there must be adequate financing. Campaign finance applies to all campaigns at the federal, state, and local levels.
I have watched four different commercial videos of Obama and Romney from 2012 Presidential Election, and created an analysis of them that how media influence politics, especially political campaigns. We will understanding of how political commercial campaigns work and how they develop them to influence certain social groups.
Hanoch, Y. & Vitouch, O. (2004). When less is more: Information, emotional arousal and the ecological reframing of the Yerkes-Dodson Law. Theory & psychology. 14, 427-452. doi: 10.1177/0959354304044918
Advertising effectiveness refer to the changes that advertising causes in the mental or physical state or activities of the recipient of an ad (Jellis Gerard).
Politicians often use negative ads because talking about themselves can provoke voters to not know what to do when all they see is positive information; it is also not the best way to persuade voters. As then related to Shafers statement in the article “In praise of negative Campaigning”,“Imagine making a decision about what car to buy, what to take, … if the only information you were exposed to was the positive information provided by carmakers, employers, vacation spots or restaurants”(58). If voters are only exposed to limited amount of information voters do not often compare the positive views of candidates. Voters view the negative side to make comparisons of where candidates are failing can how that can put our country into